Every year tens of thousands of Xhosa boys right across South Africa undergo Ulwaluko; a brutal, tribal form of male circumcision, that is done without medical support, and with no anathesia. Every year many boys die; last year it was nearly a hundred, adding to a total of more than a thousand over the past couple of decades - and you can double that number for the number of accidental amputations. Many boys are beaten, abducted, and held hostage, mutilated and even killed, to uphold this tradition. And despite legal reforms, investments, funds and Government programmes, to stem these rituals, or at least ensure it is carried out in medical environments, every year it happens again, and again, and again. And so why, when the bodies of girls rightly mean so much to most of the world, do those of boys mean so little? Why is the same universality not applied to all bodily integrity, no matter the gender, to allow everyone to choose what is done, or not done to their bodies, and at an appropriate age? Are such calls to ban practices such as Ulwaluko an overreach by Eurocentric ignoramuses; who stomp upon cultural sensitivities they don’t undestand, and project their westernized world views onto the world; or are they the insistence that all human bodies, of all people, deserve equal rights to bodily autonomy, and such rights transcend cultural and religious practices? What do you think? ~ US Express– https://tinyurl.com/38yru244 Ulwauko – https://tinyurl.com/ywbnm6m2 Aljazeera – https://tinyurl.com/ye4ve34z

2025-07-16